"Woo... Wu..." The red alarm above the head was spinning and flashing with a scary light. In the narrow passage, navy soldiers wearing white shirts rushed to their combat posts quickly.
On the bridge, the officer on duty stood in his position with his hands behind his back and his chin raised, overlooking the deck of the bow. The sailors quickly put away the clothes hanging on the side railings.
Drying clothes and sheets on warships is actually a naval tradition in various countries: whether it is the era of sailing battleships or the era of ironclad battleships.
It was not until warships had special drying equipment that the practice of drying clothes gradually became less common.
And in order to cooperate with this behavior of drying clothes, Navy warships sometimes use masts to pull up cables, just like sailing, to dry a large number of bed sheets and bedding at the same time.
Such large-scale drying of clothes is of course allowed and institutionalized. When the weather is very good, the captain will declare that day as "Laundry Day", and all officers and soldiers on the ship will wash and dry their clothes to ensure that their clothes are dry.
When fighting at sea for a long time, ensuring that the clothes are dry and fresh, preventing the growth of bacteria, is also a guarantee of combat effectiveness.
As for whether you would hang bed sheets and clothes on the cannon... In fact, the barrel of the cannon is very thick. Even if you hang bed sheets and clothes on it, words like spreading or spreading are more appropriate.
In fact, during non-combat time, it is not uncommon for soldiers to go up to the deck and lie on the gun barrel or bask in the sun on the top of the turret. This does not intuitively reflect the naval combat effectiveness.
So the story that a certain naval officer was drying his clothes on a battleship cannon, which exposed his weakness in military discipline, was seen through by his opponents, and ultimately lost the war, is just for fun, don't believe it.
"How much longer will it take?" Bernard walked into the bridge, followed by the adjutant. The two walked to the side of the officer on duty, and the Commander of the Datang Navy asked anxiously.
"The boiler still needs four hours to prepare...the air force attack force has already taken off." The officer on duty answered his superior's question awkwardly.
All naval officers knew how anxious Bernard was. They had been waiting in this sea area for so long that they could hardly lift their heads.
The army fought a bloody battle under Beiyuan City. The air force has changed the situation of the war, but the navy, which spent a huge amount of money... has not had time to fire a single cannon from the outbreak of the war until now!
This is simply a shame!
You must know that the cost of a dreadnought ship in the navy is an astonishing one million gold coins! Thick steel, huge artillery, precise optical sights... If all these things are converted into tanks, it is estimated that several can be equipped with them.
division!
In addition, naval warships consume a lot of fuel every time they set sail, and they also have to prepare food and supplies. It can be said to be a gold-devouring behemoth.
But even such a naval fleet often wanders in vain on the sea waiting for orders because it cannot find the enemy's fleet and cannot judge the situation.
"There's nothing you can do, there's no rush." Bernard in turn comforted his subordinates on duty. He walked to his seat, and the look on his face seemed much more relaxed than yesterday.
Seeing that his men were a little strange, Bernard explained: "Now that we have found the enemy, everything will be fine. As long as we kill this enemy fleet, we can go north!"
What he has always been thinking about is to protect the northern navigation and annihilate the fleet of the Mirage Kingdom. As for the fleet that attacked Dragon Island, he didn't pay attention at all.
The intelligence department of the Tang Army has long since confirmed that the large battleships built by Cyric have been concentrated in the hands of Mirage, and the only threats to Dragon Island are some cruisers and destroyers.
Bernard didn't think at all that the three battleships he held in his hands were used to fight the enemy's cruisers and destroyers. These three battleships were going to confront the Mirage Navy's capital ships head-on!
This is a collision between giants! He has no interest in fighting these small fish and shrimps in front of him.
"It doesn't matter. If the Air Force can't handle it, we'll clean up the mess!" After saying that, Bernard also looked down at the front deck and watched the sailors hurriedly put the sheets back into the cabin.
…
"They have been following us for a while." Inside the bridge, Cyric's officer stared at the two Flying Fortress bombers in the distance and said with some irritation.
"We have turned twice, and they are still following..." The Navy Commander-in-Chief of the Gobel Kingdom was also a little annoyed.
This kind of waiting is really uncomfortable. The opponent is still waiting for death...
"It seems that this kind of plane can fly for a long time..." Cyric's officer walked to the porthole and watched the two planes that once again passed through the entire fleet fly back to the front of the fleet.
What they don't know is that the B-17 Flying Fortress without bombs can indeed fly in the sky for a long time.
Moreover, as long as they find their fleet, the Datang Air Force can take off more planes and keep tracking and monitoring them.
As long as it doesn't get dark and the weather doesn't change, you can keep tracking like this until the end of time.
Just as the officers and soldiers on the battleships preparing to attack Long Island looked angrily at the two planes in the sky, two more Flying Fortresses came from a distance.
Soon there were four planes in the sky, flying back and forth around the fleet, like flies hovering over a corpse.
This tortured the Cyric fleet for more than an hour, and suddenly a black spot appeared on the horizon in the distance.
These black dots were densely packed and rushed towards Cyric's sneak attack fleet. As they approached, these black dots turned into "swordsman" shaped aircraft, forming a formation that covered the sky and the sun.
"Here we come!" Cyric's naval commander, who felt that he had made all preparations for a battle, saw the Tang Air Force attacking like a swarm of swarms. He only said this word and his whole body froze.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! He has only heard of things like airplanes, and when he heard about it before, he didn't realize how terrifying this weapon was.
But when he saw the fleet of planes appearing in front of him, he realized that these things called planes were really desperate.
"Let all the soldiers on standby get their weapons and get on the deck! Find your own position!" The commander-in-chief of the Gobel Kingdom Navy was already pale at this moment.
While issuing the order, he looked at Commander Cyric beside him: "Have your directors considered this situation?"
Even old-fashioned ironclad ships have Maxim heavy machine guns on the deck that are equipped for small targets. These machine guns are not set up for anti-aircraft purposes, but they can play some anti-aircraft role.
But obviously, it is not a good idea to rely on these Maxim machine guns for air defense, which do not even have anti-air sights or tracer bullets to correct the trajectory.
It's a pity that Cyric's sneak attack fleet only has these weapons, so they have to think of some ways to increase some anti-air firepower.
As a result, in the battleship's cabin, soldiers who had no other tasks took out the individual weapons stored in the weapons room and hurriedly ran to the deck.
Cyric Type 1 rifle! This is what they can find. In order to survive, they can only stand on the deck, aim at the dive bombers that have begun to climb in front of them, and prepare to use their rifles to decide life and death.
"Damn it! Turn! Let the fleet turn! We can't wait to die here!" Cyric's commander finally came to his senses and shouted hysterically.
At first, he did not think that this sneak attack on Long Island was for nothing. He thought that it would be difficult for the enemy to find his fleet, so he thought that he could approach Long Island at night and then bombard the important oil and gas facilities of the Tang Dynasty.
Then, through chaos and high speed, he quickly escaped, completed the mission and became Cyric's savior...
Although he had wavered when the airship force was wiped out, the subsequent order asked him to continue performing the mission. He was unable to do so and had no other choice.
At this moment, he finally realized that this operation was probably just a death attempt, a reckless experiment with no results!
"Turn!" The commander-in-chief of the Gobel Kingdom Navy also felt that continuing to move forward was simply risking death, so he also ordered: "Turn all warships! Cover each other until they leave the battlefield!"
Above the sky, through the windshield, the pilots of the Tang Army overlooked the fleet on the sea below them. The rapid steering made the white waves on both sides of these battleships no longer symmetrical, and all the battleships in the entire fleet began to draw a line on the sea.
Beautiful arc.
"Start the attack! Cut in from the tail! Dive! Dive!" In the communication channel of the first batch of attacking Stuka dive bombers, the commander loudly issued the attack order.
These Stuka dive bombers, which had removed their siren devices, fell from the clouds one after another, aiming their noses at the huge targets on the sea.
In their sights, the target that was originally the size of a sesame seed gradually enlarged and gradually became the size of a willow leaf.
Immediately afterwards, these willow leaf-sized targets continued to grow larger, and the pale yellow color of the deck wood could even be distinguished.
The turret and bridge chimneys on the battleship began to become clearer, and the trajectory of the tracer bullets fired by the Stuka, which was the first to dive in front, was also clearly visible.
"Chug, chug, chug!" As the distance got closer and closer, the pilot of the Stuka dive bomber also pulled the trigger, and the cannons on the wings also began to roar.
The sailors on the other side's deck suddenly fell over, and the soldiers holding rifles scurried away. How could anyone care about the plane rushing down?
"Stuck!" At a height that was already quite close to the battleship, the pilot threw out the 500-kilogram aerial bomb mounted under his belly. Its huge bomb body was supported by the bomb release rod, separated from the aircraft, and avoided the propeller in front.